The chief of security and the executive officer were appalled. Murphy, a queer half-lunatic look in his eyes, stroked his chin and muttered to himself, “What an idiot I’ve been! And me with the three most perfect burglars in the universe!”
Sittithong, however, was not convinced. “This is all well and good, Maslovic, but it’s a fantasy. Never once have we ever observed such powers. We’ve had people working on such things for decades, probably much longer, but even if there is some sort of psychic power in some people, it’s very minor and very limited and not subject to control. I’ll need more than a few fuzzy frames of video to believe any of what you say.”
“The Holmes Conundrum,” Maslovic sighed.
“Eh? What’s that, Sergeant?”
“The Holmes Conundrum, sir,” Mohr jumped in. “If you eliminate all the other explanations, then what is left, no matter how unbelievable, must be the truth. And we’ve had more of these kinds of powers in our histories than you suspect. It’s mostly suppressed, since the results were much less than threatening to security. Still, within decades of us establishing colonies and going through wormholes, we have been getting mutations. Most are minor, of no consequence, or they simply can not be handled. Telepaths either grow up as idiots or they go rather messily insane. There’s no control. Contrary to their being in our minds, everyone and everything around them, from the start, is in their heads. We simply aren’t designed to cope with that. Until the Great Silence, there were squads of experts whose job it was to track down anyone with even mild paranormal talents and either recruit them into studies of our own or simply erase them if we could not. Now there are no secret laboratories and no central authority to do that. Sooner or later this sort of thing was bound to come up. It is possible that we have such a case here.”
“I wonder if it’s not more than possible, sir,” Mohr responded. “Take Tara Hibernius. Isolated, out of the way, totally controlled by its governing councils. Who’s to say someone there isn’t trying to develop these sorts of people? And if any are discovered, well, then, there’s this witchcraft thing. The planet’s normal but ignorant population acts as their guardians and security force without even knowing it. Surely not all of those scientific groups and psych squads were on the other side of the Silence…”
The exec was growing whiter with every sentence. Finally she asked, “Why have I never heard of these people and this operation? Why don’t even our databases on a ship like this contain anything?”
Mohr looked slightly uncomfortable. “Yours don’t. Ours do. You see, Commander, until now, you didn’t really have a need to know.”
Sittithong started to say something, but the words wouldn’t come. Finally she asked, “Does the captain know?”
“Um, probably not.”
“The Admiralty?”
“Um, unknown, sir. It depends on whether or not they’ve needed the information.”
“And who decides who needs this information?”
Mohr was now more than uncomfortable, he had the look of a man with a noose around his neck. “Well, the Security Directorate, sir.”
“Listen, Mohr… This is a small but compact independent task force. We no longer have a civil authority to answer to. You know that.”
“Yes, sir?”
“And you’re telling me that those who command this task force, those who make the life or death decisions on it, are having information withheld from them by junior officers and even”—she looked over at Maslovic—“enlisted personnel?”
“It is all available to them if they require it.”
“I see. And you, and your comrades, you alone decide if they require it?”
“Not exactly, but in a practical sense, yes. It has to be that way, Commander. It is a part of our job, our oaths. The information we have is far more secure than anything else on this ship. If the sergeant’s right, and I believe he may be, then your entire computer system, command and control and all support and subsystems, have already been compromised. Ours isn’t because they don’t know it isn’t. Now they can’t learn of it and compromise it because it remains in the Directorate and in this room.”
“And if they’re already here? Assuming I buy this nonsense?”
“We’ve taken some precautions, sir, in this area. But, they could still be here. We do not believe it would mean anything to them if they were, though. These aren’t highly intelligent secret agents. They are three units of someone’s breeding stock who think they are getting their powers from demons inside black holes.”
“They’da been bored to death by this point if they was here,” Murphy commented dryly.
“And what about him?” Sittithong asked, gesturing towards Murphy. “He certainly knows now.”
Maslovic went over to the old captain. “What about you, Murphy? Is this really a surprise or were you delivering these girls to somebody before their babies were born?”
“Eh? I don’t know what yer talkin’ about, sonny boy.”
“You’re not the science type, but you’re not dumb, either. Sure, I believe these girls could make you take them along after they came aboard without you ever noticing. But if we’re right, and Tara Hibernius is more than a primitive backwater, then they’d need somebody to get subjects in and out without attracting any undue attention. You and your scow are just about ideal for that, Captain Murphy, and while you might have been under their spell, I don’t think they could have gotten into that small but extremely tightly guarded spaceport on their own, particularly in their condition. Don’t play the fool any more, Murphy. Who was paying you to pick up ones like these girls now and then and where were they to be taken? Might as well tell us. You should know more than anybody that, in the hands of people like us, there’s nobody who can’t be broken.”
Murphy’s grizzled features broke into a slight smile, and there was still something of a twinkle in his eyes. “You’re a smart laddie, aren’t you? ’Course, I’m no genius meself. I had no idea what them girls was capable of and that’s the Lord’s truth. I mostly never know, and that suits me fine. I have—had—a regular route. The extra couple of folks now and then they put on at Tara Hibernius was always young, usually young girls in a family way, you might say. The pay was good, and instead of deadheading out of that hole I made a handsome profit, all below the table, as it were. I never asked no questions. That woulda been bad fer business, y’see. There was always somebody at the other end worried about gettin’ ’em through the port, usually without the port knowin’, if you know what I mean. And me account in the Trade Bank of Marchellus would get fatter. Hell, I never even knew if I had a pickup ’til I got ’em. Sometimes yes, but only maybe a third of the time if that. I can say that most of them what came aboard was out-and-out devil worshippers or somethin’ of the sort, though. Just like them. All sorts of secret stuff and signs and blasphemous shit.”
“Did they all seem to believe that stuff, like these girls seem to?” Maslovic asked him.
“Some did. Some didn’t. You could kinda tell. But the ones that didn’t seem to be into it was often the scariest of the bunch.”
“In what way?”
“I can’t explain it to you. Not really. But you could feel it, deep inside. But if any of that sort had been aboard this time, we wouldn’t be standin’ here now talkin’ about it, ’cause they’d be runnin’ this whole damned tin soldier factory. This lot, they’re probably gettin’ their jollies playin’ Peepin’ Tom and explorin’ the place. They ain’t actin’, Sarge. They’re really that dumb. Like little kids. I got to tell you, if I knew about what these girls could do, I’da been makin’ plans to divert maybe to some worlds that got things worth stealin’ before I dropped ’em off.”
“And where were you to drop them off, Captain?” Mohr asked him, thinking.
“Same place as always. Didn’t make sense to keep ’em around any longer than we had to, so it was my next stop. Queer little place called simply Barnum’s World. You know it?”
Sittithong went
over to the main console and ran a check. “Yes, here it is. Not much of a place. Apparently an old service world that bred and supplied plants and animals to newly terraformed colonies. They maintain themselves with some major grants and by replacing flora and fauna that needs it on worlds that have had problems keeping up their ecosystems. You’re right, Captain. Odd place. Everything from dogs to elephants to a number of things found in exploration without Old Earth origins, as well as purebred strains of grains, grasses, trees from high altitude evergreens to jungle vines. They always pay us our fees, so I don’t believe we’ve had cause to send anyone there in, well, at least as long as I can remember. Not much of a shore leave area… Huh. Says here it’s maintained by a Catholic monastic order, and its population is recruited from various colonies and isn’t native.”
“That’s the place,” Murphy agreed. “Run by an offshoot of the original Jesuits, they are. Smart lads. Zoologists, agronomists…”
“Geneticists?” Maslovic asked.
Murphy looked genuinely surprised as he caught the train of thought. “Be damned! Never would have thought of that. But these are real Holy Joes. Even as a blind they’d never go for Satanism. These are more like the ones who’d still burn witches at the stake.”
“Well, it would be a logical cover. And wasn’t that what you said these girls faced back home? No, I’m beginning to see a very disturbing pattern here,” Mohr commented. “I think maybe we’ve put off visiting this Barnum a bit too long. Don’t you agree, Commander?”
“I believe we should notify the captain of this before going any further,” Sittithong replied. “This is suddenly turning very, very dark.”
Mohr nodded. “I agree. And we’ve got something of a cover here with Murphy and his ship. We can simply explain our visit as taking our people where they were heading in the first place.”
They all seemed to like the idea—all, that is, except Murphy. “Uh, pardon me, folks, but ain’t you forgettin’ somethin’ here?”
“Yes?”
“I wasn’t kiddin’ about them girls bein’ scared out of their wits at the idea of goin’ back to their home world. They was all told that they would burn if they ever tried a comeback. And that’s where they think we’re takin’ ’em now. That’s why they did what they did.”
“Yes, but we’re not going to do that now. They’re going where they want to go,” Sittithong pointed out.
“Uh, yeah, well and good if you can get the word to ’em. But might I remind all of you that we ain’t got ’em? And we got no idea where they are around here or how the hell to find ’em?”
IV: A SUMMONS FROM THE DARK
“Okay, girls, where are you at?” Murphy’s voice came, friendly and fatherly sounding with a medium brogue through the ship’s general public address system. “This is yer old friend Captain Murphy here, and after ye pulled that neat disappearin’ trick the folks here they decided to make a deal. You can’t stay hid forever in any case. What if one of them wee ones was to decide to get born while nobody could see? No doctors, no midwives, no nothin’ around to make sure the wee ones don’t croak and the mother don’t bleed to death. Now, you know you can trust the old captain. They’re gonna let us go. Take us down where we was goin’ in the first place. All of us, fast, in one of their comfy shuttles. Now, I know you can hear me. God knows everybody else can. We’re in one of the ship’s lounges right now and we’ll stay there. All the maps on the walls will blink showin’ where we are, and they all show where you are, so just come on down. I swear this is on the up-and-up. They just want to be rid of us.”
He switched off the PA and settled back in his chair, a pint of synthetic dark ale in one hand. He took a swig, and the foam seemed to crust on his upper lip.
“You think they’ll buy it? That they’ll trust you?” Lieutenant Commander Mohr asked him, more than a little worried. Murphy had the feeling that the security officer wasn’t nearly as confident of the inviolability of his secret computers and files as he made out he was.
“Well, they’ll probably think about it for a bit,” Murphy replied, “but, then, one of them baby contractions will nip ’em in the tummy and they’ll get real tired out real fast and start thinkin’ it over. I expect they’ll eventually come here just to check it out before they show themselves, but, yes, if we’re straight with them, then they’ll be straight with us. I’m pretty sure of that.”
Mohr nodded. “I hope you’re right. And I really do want them off this ship, all three and you, as fast as is practical. In fact, the Admiralty itself pretty well ordered it. As soon as we insure that they’re in good shape, I’m packing you all off with one of my best pilots and Sergeant Maslovic as company. They’ll get you down to Barnum’s World all right. After that, it’s up to you.”
“I have a feelin’ you may have some problems once they’re down there, at least in keepin’ ’em in view, but we’ll see,” Murphy told him. “I’m well out of this, I think. At least their delivery will net me enough to get me to a junkyard planet like Sepuchus where I can put together another ship. Maybe a wee bit faster one.”
“No wonder your ship’s so banged up! You bought it at salvage?”
“Well, I bought the hulk at salvage, and the rest of the parts bit by bit. It’s actually quite practical, you see. Cheap but serviceable, I can repair it with standardized parts most anywhere if need be, and nobody pays much attention to rustbuckets like that. Beats me why you even bothered to haul me in this time. Pickin’s must be slim.”
Mohr shrugged. “It’s less that than the principle of the thing. We let you get away with it, suddenly everybody tries and we wind up in a series of mini wars just to keep operating. And I have to tell you, Murphy, that pirates and privateers are multiplying like cockroaches. Things are getting worse and worse. It’s all breaking down, and one day it’s going to be victims and prey and then nothing much at all. You can see it coming.”
“Perhaps. I think we’re better’n that,” the old captain told him. “Me, I think it’s about time this nasty little system fell apart so it could be replaced with something better, something that works. We got thirty, forty colonies that could be self-sufficient in food and a lot of supplies if they could kick the habit of dependin’ on other worlds for things and start doin’ more of it themselves. So long as they think of themselves as colonies, though, they’re gonna be stuck, and eventually every pig will sink into the mud and drown. No, Commander, we got to stop this whole colonial stuff. It’s time for the kids to realize they grew up.”
“You’re talking about anarchy.”
“I’m talkin’ about independence! We change or we die. That’s the way it’s always been.”
“Then who protects these new independent worlds from the ruthless killers who’ll sweep in the moment there’s no navy to at least threaten them?”
“They protect themselves! They do it or they die! Faced with that, they’ll protect themselves, believe you me. And it may cost a world or two. They have to see that they got no choice but to fight for their own. It’s tough, but that’s the way of it.”
“Pretty ruthless, Murphy. You’re talking about possibly millions of innocent lives.”
“That may be true, but you just said it yourself. It’s breakin’ down, it is. It can’t be held and your big ships can’t defend the whole of it. They learn to do it, or they die fast and messy or slow and messier. They’ll learn.” He looked at the clock and changed his tone.
“I think it’s time I whisper more sweet nothin’s to me darlin’s,” he sighed, and turned towards the intercom.
“C’mon, me sweet darlin’s. Can’t keep the nice folk here waitin’. Besides, I don’t know about you, but I’m more’n ready to blow this joint and get back to some free land. I’m gettin’ kinda bored just sittin’ here and waitin’, and if we miss our stop, well, then, we might be stuck on this tub for a long, long time.”
He paused for a moment. “Anything?”
“No,” Mohr sighed. “I think—what the
hell?”
He was looking over Murphy’s shoulder at a data screen, and suddenly the screen had gone black. Now, in it, appeared shimmering almost cartoon-like outlines of the three missing girls. With just the outlines and an otherwise blank background, it was impossible to figure out where they were.
“Well, well! How are you, darlin’s?” Murphy beamed.
“How do we know this ain’t no trick?” came an eerie set of voices, all three speaking in perfect unison.
“Oh, c’mon. I know it’s not, but think about it. You got them over a barrel, darlin’s. They want you off, and me with you. What’s the choice? I mean, you can stay like ye are, whatever that is, and then what? The wee ones are born and there’s either messy problems or ye ain’t gonna be thinkin’ ’bout hidin’ out nohow. They ain’t gonna kill you, neither. They don’t know what’d happen to their pretty ship if they tried. So come on up, get somethin’ here to eat and drink, take a rest and get a shower and some clean clothes, and then we’ll be off.”
“In your ship?”
“Well, no, but don’t let that worry you none. I ain’t gonna lose as much as it seems. They’ll take us on one of their small ships, nice and comfy and much faster than I could do it. And once down, do you really care about them?”
The girls seemed to be thinking it over, or, more correctly, the collective mind seemed to mull over the choices. The trouble was, Murphy reflected, even all three of them together couldn’t get a deep thought and haul it out if it took three days. The problem was, were he in their position, he doubted if he would trust any of them, least of all him, to do more than dissect them to see how they did their little trick.
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